The vending machine industry occupies a substantial segment of the food industry. Many businesses and institutions provide food to their employees and guests which can be purchased from their own vending machine facilities. Often, businesses and institutions will own and supply a substantial number of vending machines. Vending machines may also stock non-food items.
Typically, a vending machine accepts payment in the form of coins and paper currency. However, with the advent of cash cards, vending machines also accept payment in the form of a cash card debit.
Cash cards are encoded with a credit balance when a user purchases credit from a cash card dispensing apparatus. Vending machines have the ability to read the cash card's encoding and debit the cash card's available balance for a purchase.
While the cash card dispensing apparatus described above has important attributes, it does not provide the ability to accept more than one form of payment, typically currency. Such a configuration is problematic in several ways. First, a user may have inadequate currency available to make the user's preferred choice. A sale in this circumstance is often lost. Furthermore, because the cash card dispensing apparatus only accepts currency, it is a ready target for force entry.
In providing a cash card dispensing apparatus, each individual apparatus is vulnerable to theft by forced entry. This is particularly problematic since often an entire vending facility's cash receipts are enclosed in the cash card dispensing apparatus. Therefore, some apparatus owners may prefer that their apparatus not accept currency for security purposes. However, some vending machine facilities are in districts of concern while others are not. Therefore, an upgradable apparatus design providing different levels of security according to need is desirable.